“The goal of sustainability is to leave future generations with more opportunities and fewer problems,” says Ximing Cai, associate director for the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. This is something that needs to be understood at all U.S. colleges and universities. Luckily, there are universities like this that are making major advancements in the field of sustainability on campus that teach students why protecting the environment matters.
The University of Illinois is known as a gold-level sustainability campus. This means that they not only teach the importance of sustainability, they practice it too. Examples include promoting the use of biking and using solar energy. The university understands that sustainability goes beyond recycling, which, according to the article, Future of sustainability on campus appears positive, provides students access to recycling bins across the campus, which sits on 1,783 acres. The university puts a strong focus on sustainability because they believe that students who are taught these important values will have the potential to make a positive impact on the environment beyond college.
“By making sustainability a part of students’ experience at this school, it may be considered in the influential decisions that they make in their professional life. In this way, the University can foster long-term change,” says Nick Heyek, a junior at the University of Illinois and chair of the Student Sustainability Committee.
This sentiment is something that all colleges and universities need to understand. It’s about more than getting students to realize what trash is and what recyclables are, it’s about fostering a deep and meaningful understanding of why it’s important to care for the Earth. The University of Illinois program is just an example of how to create positive, sustainable change in the world. As mentioned in the article in the campus newspaper, colleges and universities aren’t the biggest contributors to environmental damage, but after doing simple research one can learn that they certainly create a large amount of waste.
According to a piece written on Boston College’s sustainability website calledKnow Your Facts, “The average college student produces 640 pounds of solid waste each year, including 500 disposable cups and 320 pounds of paper.” Imagine an average college that enrolls thousands of students each year—that’s a lot of waste, isn’t it?
Morgan White, the associate director at Facilities and Services for Sustainability at the University of Illinois, says “Really, it’s about finding solutions, using the resources here that can be implemented and trying to spread that awareness not only to neighbor organizations, but also to the students and instill in our graduates the understanding of how this is important.”
It’s a great step in the right direction—using their own resources to teach students skills and practices that can be used no matter where they end up in life. It’s important for colleges to acknowledge the environmental impact that they have and try to come up with ways to reduce that impact while teaching students valuable sustainable lessons. Sustainability is only going to become more important in the next few years, so looking at examples such as the University of Illinois is a great first step to making positive environmental change at other universities and colleges across the United States.
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